Editor's Note: This post includes references to domestic violence, depression, infertility.
Whether they have ghostwriters or just a natural flair for the written word, celebrity memoirs can be really, really good.
And in a lot of these celeb memoirs, they often reveal behind-the-scenes info about their exes and current spouses. Here are some of the best memoir revelations:
1. Mary-Louise Parker's memoir, Dear Mr. You, covers the years she was left by Billy Crudup — including when he left a pregnant Parker to pursue a relationship with Claire Danes.
In "Dear Mr. Cabdriver," she writes: “I am alone. Look, see? I am pregnant and alone. It hurts to even breathe.”
2. In Gabrielle Union's second memoir, You Got Anything Stronger, she writes about her heartbreak at finding out Dwyane Wade had a child with someone else.
3. In her first memoir — and in a lighter story — Union described her first husband, NFL player Chris Howard, proposing to her with a "bucket of KFC on the floor."
4. In her memoir, Open Book, Jessica Simpson revealed she had "Instagram-girlfriend syndrome before it was a thing," and that she wanted the world to see her then-husband Nick Lachey in the "best light" because she was "hopelessly" in love with him.
Jessica wrote in her 2020 memoir that she didn't want to outshine Nick, and went on to add that she wanted him to feel like he could "show me all that he knew" about the entertainment industry and the world.
Jessica included diary entries in the memoir, including a passage she wrote to Nick shortly after their divorce. In reference to Nick's relationship (now marriage) with Vanessa Lachey, she wrote, "Seems that you forgot the love you spoke to me."
5. Demi Moore spilled a lot of tea about her relationship with Ashton Kutcher in her 2019 memoir Inside Out. She wrote that he told her 'I don't think I can do this, and I don't know if this is working,' after she'd settled on an egg donor during an ongoing fertility struggle.
She revealed Ashton allegedly told Demi "I never thought you'd go through with it" when she asked him why he let her go through the process of finding a potential donor.
Fertility wasn't the only sensitive issue Demi discussed in the book. She also described the couple's exploration of nonmonogamy as an ultimate "mistake."
"Part of the point of monogamy is the energy of somebody making the sacrifice or the choice for you," Demi wrote in part. "As soon as another person is brought in, you are no longer being held in that sacred spot."
Demi also alleged that Ashton once received a note from a 21-year-old while the couple was at a bowling alley...and allegedly brought the note-writer back to their shared home when Demi was traveling.
6. In Anna Faris' memoir Unqualified, she wrote, "It felt like I was crossing something off the list. Live together, check. Marriage, check."
She also wrote, "Sure, I get to proclaim I didn't fuck Chris before I left Ben, but what is there to celebrate in that? It didn't make me a hero."
7. Tiffany Hadish's memoir, The Last Black Unicorn, discusses the alleged physical abuse from her then-husband.
"Just snatched me by my shirt, and pulled me to the elevator and threw me in it...once we got to our hotel room, he was so quick," she alleged. "He snatched me by the neck and slammed me into the wall."
8. In Holly Madison's memoir, Down The Rabbit Hole, she gave readers a reality check about life in the Playboy Mansion. About her first night sleeping with Hugh Hefner (an unofficial precursor to her invitation to move into the mansion), she wrote: "It was so brief that I can't even recall what it felt like beyond having a heavy body on top of mine."
“Hef knew how desperate, sad, and broken I was, but didn’t do a damn thing about it," she wrote. "I’d given seven years of my life to a man who couldn’t even have a conversation with me.”
9. In Kelly Ripa's memoir, Live Wire: Long-Winded Short Stories, she shared that her now-husband Mark Consuelos broke up with her less than one week before he asked her to elope with him in Vegas.
10. Yolanda Hadid wrote in her 2017 memoir, Believe Me: My Battle with the Invisible Disability of Lyme Disease, that people in her life doubted her Lyme disease diagnosis, including her then-spouse.
11. Kim Gordon called her divorce from Thurston Moore the most "conventional story ever" in her memoir, Girl in a Band.
12. In Redefining Realness, the 2014 memoir from Janet Mock, she wrote deeply about her ex-husband, Troy, and what a pivotal role he played in her twenties.
